National Action Party

The National Action Party (PAN) is a liberal-conservative and Christian democratic political party in Mexico, founded on 16 September 1939 by Manuel Gomez Morin. The party sought to curb the expansion of power by the post-Mexican Revolution government, and it rejected the Marxist idea of class warfare in favor of Catholic doctrine. In 2000, PAN presidential candiate and former Governor of Guanajuato Vicente Fox won the presidential election, defeating former Secretary of the Interior Francisco Labastida with 42.52% of the vote; this brought an end to 71 years of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) rule over Mexico, and Fox was the first presidential candidate in history to defeat the party. The party opposed state-financed abortion (although Fox legalized "morning-after" emergency pills) and same-sex civil unions, alleging that the constitution protected the institution of the family. In 2006, PAN leader and President of Mexico Felipe Calderon ignited the Mexican Drug War, deploying 6,500 federal troops to fight against the drug cartels of Mexico. By 2013, 120,000 people had been killed, plus 27,000 missing; the murder rate skyrocketed, external debt increased by 90%, and the poverty rate rose from 43% to 46%. As a result, the party lost to the PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto during the 2012 presidential election.